finalmente

The window, as we say, is open, which in turn means a door is about to close. As I recall that's the reverse or at least some scrambled version of that saying about what God does, but there's no power involved here that's higher than a school registrar acting under direction from me. It's hard to get any further from divine intervention than No Child Left Behind testing time in a public school.

Unless, of course, the phone call I'll make tomorrow to say, "Jig's up. Show now or I'll have to drop you," inspires them out of bed, but this will not happen, or would not mean much if it did. Nearly a quarter's worth of make-up work? Seven straight weeks of absences, minus one day? Actions speak louder than words--the words to me, the words to their friends, the words to the attendance clerk moonlighting at the grocery: "We're gonna come back." What did that ever mean?

In an ideal world--if such a place would include teen parents--I know they would have liked to have done it, come to school, parented their child, worked the jobs that pay the car and the gas and the rent and the food and the other crap they like to buy, when they can, teenagers being teenagers, even when they're a family. I know they would have liked it to be less hard. It's a nice thought, the education, but at this point nothing more than that. Not even a certain route to a less crappy job, an easier life, without the miracle of papers. Politicians' promises seeming--and often being--the figment of a far-off imagination, more sleep and no homework today have won out over a wish and a prayer for tomorrow.

That hope is all I've ever had to offer. A maybe opportunity--really, that's school for every student: take advantage of what it might be, or don't. And now we're at the end. This week every student on my roster must be tested to show Adequate Yearly Progress in English, and I'll have them officially dropped, finally, because they're not there to prove their proficiency. The paperwork demands it.

Technically, they could re-enroll at any time: public school is free and available until age twenty-one. But, I think this will be the excuse, the conclusion: "We wanted to come, but they dropped us." Yep, thirty-two school days later--twenty-two after the minimum, I did.